6 Common Law Firm Marketing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Your marketing efforts are critical to your ability to bring in clients and give them a better idea of what your firm can offer. Unfortunately, many law firms fall into marketing traps. Instead of bringing in clients, your marketing efforts might cause you to spend more money than you anticipated or leave you struggling to get the results you hoped for. Are you making any of these key marketing errors?

Error #1: Skipping Local Marketing

Local marketing is one of the most important forms of marketing for your law firm. You don’t need traffic that’s just coming by your website for the latest legal advice or that will never hire you to represent them–and you work in a specific state, likely within a specific city or area. Make sure that you focus on local marketing! Highlight local keywords and consider using searcher location as a component for your ads. You’ll be surprised by how much of a difference it makes in the type of traffic you get–which in turn can significantly increase the return on your marketing investment.

Error #2: Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Who is your law firm really marketing to?

Are you looking for young people who were just caught in their first crime? Young couples that are getting divorced? Or is your focus on family law, with a specific focus on clients who can afford to go the distance when it comes to fighting for their desires?

Take the time to sit down and develop a clear buyer persona. Then, make sure you take the time to target your advertisements to that persona. Where can they be found most often? For example, most people now have Facebook accounts, but younger people are more likely to use Instagram and Snapchat, which means that you may need to focus your efforts there.

Error #3: Letting Qualified Leads Slip By

When someone calls your office, who do they get? Are they connected to a complicated phone tree that has them frustrated long before they get to speak to a live person, or do they connect directly with a receptionist? If they do connect with a receptionist, does your receptionist help guide them through the final steps of the sales cycle, or do they simply take a number and promise to call them back later? You need a well-trained receptionist and a phone system that will help guide potential clients as well as accurately representing your law firm’s ability to help these important clients. Not only that, both the receptionist and your phone system should be in keeping with the persona you have created for your firm and what your clients expect based on your advertisements. These simple strategies can go a long way toward helping your law firm keep and convert qualified leads, rather than sending them to your competition.

Error #4: Ignoring the Competition

There are plenty of other lawyers in your area, many of whom work in the same field you do. Quick: do you know how they’re handling their marketing? You don’t want a marketing campaign that is an exact duplicate of what your competitors are doing, but you don’t want to miss out on opportunities they’ve already taken advantage of, either. When it comes to the competition, you need to know what they’re doing–so make sure that you check out:

Their social media campaigns. Which platforms are they using? How do they connect with potential clients?

Their keywords. What keywords are your competitors targeting? Are you using the right keywords, or are you missing out?

Their advertisements. Do they look just like every other advertisement for a lawyer in your field–including yours? If so, you may need to make alterations to your own plan to create something different.

Error #5: Working with the Wrong Agency (Or No Agency at All)

Are you still trying to handle your marketing in-house? Have you worked with agencies in the past that just didn’t fulfill your needs and meet your expectations? When you choose a marketing agency, make sure you ask the right questions. Before making a choice, ask:

Have you worked with law firms before? The legal field offers unique considerations for marketing, and you want a marketing agency with experience in that area.

What metrics do you track?

How do you determine the success of a new campaign?

If a campaign doesn’t perform as intended, what will you do to try to fix it?

How do you prefer to communicate with your clients?

What do your other clients have to say about your business? Can I talk to any of them for a personal recommendation?

What do you consider your greatest success as an advertiser?

When you take the time to get to know the marketing agency, you’ll get a better picture of whether they are a good fit for you–and a better idea of how they will handle marketing your business.

Error #6: You Still View Marketing as an Expense

Marketing can quickly take up a large percentage of your budget, especially if you’re struggling to see the return on your investment. Marketing, however, is so much more than just a vaguely defined expense or an unfortunate necessity. When it comes to your law firm, marketing is a critical investment. Your marketing efforts allow you to bring in more clients, connect with your existing clients, and increase client trust in you. Your blogs and social media posts are an incredible tool for raising awareness about your firm and increasing client trust. When you view marketing as an investment–and take the time to track the return on that investment–you will often discover that you are in a better position to shape your marketing efforts to better advance your business, rather than wasting money on marketing efforts that will fall flat.

Are you ready to break out of the mistake cycle and make better choices for your law firm? Is it time to set your past mistakes to the side and learn how to accomplish more with your marketing than you ever dreamed possible? Contact us today to learn more about how we can handle your marketing efforts and help guide you to success.